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TI-SLAYERY IN YIRGINIA 




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RELATIVE TO THE 



"BLIGHTING CURSE OF SLAVERY. 



Debates on tlie ''Nat Turner Insurrecti 
Queries "by William Crane, &c. 



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BALTIMORE: 
J. F. WEISHAMPEL, BOOKSELLER AND S 

No. 8, uuder the Kuta-w House. 

1865. 






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ANTI-SLAVERY IN VIRGINIA. 



From Jefferson's *' Notes on Virginia," written 1181. 
Query xviii : 

The whole commerce between niaster and slave is a per- 
petual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most un- 
relenting despotism on the one part, and degrading submis- 
sion on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imi- 
tate it, for man is an imitative animal. This quality is the 
germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave, 
he is learning to do what he sees others do. If a parent 
could find no motive, either in his philanthropy or his self- 
love, for restraining the intemperance of passion towards his 
slave, it should always be a sufficient one that his child is 
present. But generally, it is not sufficient. The parent 
storms ; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, 
puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a 
loose tongue to the worst of his passions, and, thus nursed, 
educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be 
stamped with odious peculiarities. The man must be a 
prodigy who can retain his manners and his morals unde- 
praved by such circumstances. And Avith what execration 
should the statesman be loaded, who, permitting one-half 
the citizens thus to trample on the rights of the other, trans- 
forms those into despots and these into enemies, destroys the 
morals of the one part, and the amor patria of the other. 
For, if a slave can have a country in this world, it must be 
any other in preference to that in which he is born to live 



J 



and labor for another — in wliicli he must lock up the facul- 
ties of his nature, contribute, as far as depends on his indi- 
vidual endeavors, to the evanishment of the human race, or 
entail his own miserable condition on the endless generations 
proceeding from him. With the morals of a people, their 
industry also is destroyed ; for, in a warm climate, no man 
will labor for himself who can make another labor for him. 
This is so true that, of the proprietors of slaves, a very small 
proportion, indeed, are ever seen to labor. And can the 
liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed 
their only firm basis — a conviction in the minds of the peo- 
ple that these liberties are of the gift of Grod ; that they are 
not to be violated but with His wrath ? Indeed, I tremble for 
my country ivhen I reflect that God is just ; that His justice can- 
not sleep forever. That, considering numbers, nature and 
natural means, only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, 
an exchange of situation is among possible events. That it 
may become probable hy supernatural interference ! The 
Almighty has no attribute which can take sides with us in such 
a contest. 

But it is impossible to be temperate and to pursue this 
subject through the various considerations of policy, of 
morals, of history, natural and civil. We must be contented 
to hope they will force their way into every one's mind. I 
think a change already perceptible, since the origin of the 
present revolution. The spirit of the master is abating. 
That of the slave, rising from the dust, his condition molli- 
fying — the way, I hope, preparing, under the auspices of 
heaven, /or a total emancipation ; and that this is disposed, 
in the order of events, to be with the consent of the masterSy 
rather than by their extirpation. 



Extract from Thomas Jefferson to Edward Coles, August, 
1814: 

'' The hour of emancipation is advancing in the march of 
time. It will come, and whetlier brouglit on by the gener- 



oils energy of our own minds, or by the bloody process of 
St. Domingo, excited and conducted by the power of our 
present enemy, [Great Britain,] if once stationed perma- 
nently within our country and offering asylum and arms to 
the oppressed, [negro,] is a leaf in our history not yet turned 
over." 



Extract from the Will of General Washingtox, July, 
1799, evincing a thorough repugnance to the whole system 
of slavery : 

^^ Item. Upon the decease of my Avife, it is my will and 
desire, that all the slaves which I hold in my own right, shall 
receive their freedom. To emancipate them during her life, 
would, though earnestly wished by me, be attended with 
such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermix- 
ture by marriages, with the dowertjiegroes, as to excite the 
most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences to 
the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of 
the same proprietor ; it not being in my power, under the 
tenure by which the dower '^egroes are held, to manumit 
them. And whereas, among those who will receive freedom 
according to this devise, there may be some who, from old 
age or bodily infirmities, and others who, on account of their 
infancy, will be unable to support themselves, it is my will 
and desire, that all who come under the first and second de- 
scription, shall be comfortably clothed and fed by my heirs 
while they live ; and that such of the latter description as 
have no parents living, or, if living, are unable or unwilling 
to provide for them, shall be bound by the court until they 
shall arrive at the age of twenty-five years ; and in cases 
where no record can be produced, whereby their ages can be 
ascertained, the judgment of the court, upon its own view of 
the subject, shall be adequate and final. The i^egroes thus 
bound, are, by their masters or mistresses to be taught to 
read and write, and be brought up to some useful occupa- 



tion, agreeably to the laws of the commonwealth of Virginia, 
providing for the support of orphan and other poor children. 
And I do hereby expressly forbid the sale or transportation 
out of the said commonwealth, of any slave I may die pos- \ 
sessed of, under any pretence whatsoever. And I do more- 
over most pointedly and most solemnly enjoin it upon my 
executors hereafter named, or the survivors of them, to see 
that litis clause respecting slaves, and every part thereof, be 
religiously fulfilled at the epoch at which it is directed to 
take place, without evasion, neglect, or delay, after the crops 
which may then be on the ground are harvested, particularly 
as it respects the aged and infirm ; seeing that a regular and 
permanent fund be established for their support as long as 
they are subjects requiring it, not trusting to the uncertain 
provision made by individuals." 



NAT TUKNER MASSACRE. 

The Nat Turner massacre in Southampton county, Va., 
commenced August 20th, 1831, at midnight, and lasted but 
one day. It appears to have been the only real l^egro insur- 
rection that has ever occurred, during nearly two and a-half 
centuries of slavery in this country — and this was a local 
occurrence, extending over a space of probably not more than 
fifteen or twenty square miles. But while our country has 
never witnessed any enlarged plans of servile insurrection, 
proving that the frightful apprehensions so often indulged, 
that one race must some day exterminate the other, have 
had little or no foundation, yet this Avas a most hor- 
ribly fiendish affair. Ten men, fourteen Avomen, and 
thirty-one children, were indiscriminately murdered. Tur- 
ner made a full confession to Thomas R. Gray, pub- 
lished in Baltimore tlie same year. Pie says he had 
learned to read and write, but had manifestly no advantages 
of wisdom from books. He seems to have been absorbed 
entirely in fanatical impressions, in signs, dreams^ ifec, and 



W 



particularly that God had destined him to the work in which 
he engaged. He had no matured jilans, and no coadjutors 
heyond about half a dozen men in his immediate vicinity 
with a supply of whiskey, until they commenced their work, 
when perhaps thirty or forty others joined them. Only fif- 
teen individuals, including Nat himself, were tried and 
executed, though others were transported out of the State. 
A terrible excitement over the whole of the Slave States was 
of course the immediate consequence, and, at the next meet- 
ing of the Virginia Legislature, the great questions of1\egro 
slavery, and of liberty and slavery generally, were the all- 
absorbing topics of discussion. 

A committee appointed on memorials praying for some 
law for a gradual abolition of slavery, reported a resolution,* 
that it was inexpedient to legislate at all on the subject; and 
a motion to amend by inserting expedient in the place of 
inexpedient, was the general point of the debate. The whole 
subject was most eloquently discussed in all of its aspects 
and interests, its present and j)rospective evils, but a large 
majority coincided w^ith the report of the committee. The 
same Legislature, however, enacted those wicked laws, pro- 
hibiting under severe penalties all preaching by colored men, 
and all schools for teaching colored people. 

The speeches in this debate were published in the Rich- 
mond Enquirer, and were many of them afterwards published 
in pamphlet form by the friends of the negro and scattered 
over the State, but unhappily the authors were all charged 
with abolitionism, and their political prospects were well 
nigh prostrated forever. 

A few very brief extracts from some of these speeches 
are subjoined : 

VIRGINIA LEGISLATURE, JANUARY, 1832. 
Mr. P. A. Rolling, of Buckingham, said : 
" He dared repeat that slavery was a Uightiiig, withering 
V curse, that robs Virginia of her wealth, honor and prosper- 



ity, and lie foreboded the day when civil discord shall 
shate this vast empire to its centre, when the black war- 
cloud shall lower and its thunderings be heard throughout 
the land." 

And he closed his speech with these admirable words : 

" Mr. Speaker, it is vain for gentlemen to deny the fact, 
the feelings of society are fast becoming adverse to slavery. 
The moral causes which produce that feeling are on the 
march, and will on iintil the groans of slavery arc heard no 
more' in this else happy country. Look over this world's wide 
page — see the rapid progress of liberal feelings — see the 
shackles falling from nations who have long writhed under 
the galling yoke of slavery. Liberty is going over the whole 
• earth — hand in hand with Christianity. The ancient tem- 
ples of slavery, rendered venerable alone by their antiquity, 
are crumbling into dust. Ancient prejudices are flying be- 
fore the light of truth — are dissipated by its rays, as the 
idle vapor by the bright sun. The noble sentiment of Burns : 

" Come let us pray, that come it may 
As come it will, for all tbat, 
That man to man, o'er all the world, 
May brother be, for airthat " — 

is rapidly spreading. The day-star • of human liberty has 
risen above the dark horizon of slavery, and will continue 
its briglit career, until it smiles alike on all men." 

Mr. C. J. Faulkner, of Berkeley, said : 

"Sir, I am gratified that no gentleman lias yet risen in 
this Hall, the advocate of slavery. * * * * Let me 
compare the condition of the slaveholding portion of this 
commonwealth, barren, desolate, and scarred, as it were, by 
the avenging hand of heaven, with the descriptions which 
we have of this same country, from those who first broke its 
virgin soil. To what is this change ascribable? Alone to 
the witliering, blasting eff'ects of slavery. If this does not 



satisfy liim, let me request liim to extend his travels to the 
Northern States of this Union, and heg him to contrast the 
happiness and contentment which prevails throughout that 
country, the husy and cheerful sound of industry, the rapid 
and swelling growth of their population, their means and 
institutions of education, their skill and proficiency in the 
useful arts, their enterprise and public spirit, the monu- 
ments of their commercial and manufacturing industry, and 
above all their devoted attachment to the government from 
wliich they derive their protection, with the division, dis- 
content, indolence, and poverty of the Southern country. 
To what, sir, is all this ascribable? 'Tis to that vice in the 
organization of society by which one-half of its inhabitants 
are arrayed in interest and feeling against the other half ; 
to that unfortunate state of society in which free men regard 
labor as disgraceful, and slaves shrink from it as a burden 
tyrannically imposed upon them. ' To that condition of 
things in ichich half a million of your population can feel no 
sympathy ivith the society, in the p)rosperity of ivhich, they are 
forbidden to participate, and no attachment to a government at 
lohose hands they receive nothing hut injustice.' In the lan- 
guage of the wise, prophetic Jefferson, ' you must approach, 
this subject, you must adopt some plan of emancipation, or 

WORSE WILL follow.' " 

Mr. Thomas Jefferson Randolph^ grand-son of Thomas 
Jefferson, had no superior for patriotic eloquence during this 
most interesting debate. After showing that the l^egro 
population in Eastern Virginia had increased 186 per cent, 
in the 40 years from 1790 to 1830, while the whites in the 
same region had increased but 51 per cent., he remarked: 

'' There is one circumstance to which we are to look as 
inevitable in the fullness of time — a dissolution of this Union. 
Grod grant it may not happen in our time or that of our chil- 
dren ; but, sir, it must come sooner or later, and Avhen it 
does come, border war follows it, as certain as the night fol- 



hi 



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lows the day. An enemy upon your frontier offering arms 
and asylum to tliis population, tampering with it in your 
hosom, wlien your citizens shall march to repel the invader, 
their families butchered and their homes desolated in the 
rear, the spear will fall from the warrior's grasp, his heart 
may be of steel, but it must quail. Suppose an invasion 
in part with hlack troops, speaking the same language, of 
the same nation, burning with enthusiasm for the liberation 
of their race ; if they are not crushed the moment they put 
foot upon your soil, they roll forward, an hourly swelling 
mass ; your energies are paralyzed, your power is gone ; the 
morasses of the lowlands, the fastnesses of i;he mountains, 
cannot save your wives and children from destruction. 
Sir, we cannot war wdth these disadvantages ; i^eace, ignoble, 
dbjett peace ; peace upon any conditions that an enemy may 
offer, must he accepted. Are Ave, then, prepared to barter the 
liberty of our children for slaves for them. * * * gij.^ 
it is a practice, and an increasing practice in parts of Vir- 
ginia to rear slaves for market. How can an honorable mind, 
a patriot and a lover of his country, bear to see this ancient 
Dominion, rendered illustrious by the noble devotion and 
patriotism of her sons, in the cause of liberty^ converted 
into one grand menagerie^ where men are to be reared for 
market like oxen for the shambles. Is this better, is it not 
worse, than the Slave Trade, that trade which enlisted the 
labor of the good and the wise of every creed and every clime to 
abolish it f" 

The excellent speeches of Thomas Marshall, of Fauquier, 
son of Chief- Justice Marshall, John A. Chandler, of Nor- 
folk, Henry Berry, of Jefferson, and the late Gov. James 
McDowell, of Rockbridge, Averealso reprinted and scattered. 
But all their efforts were fruitless, — cujiidity and cotton 
reigned. The Demon of Slavery was then urging John C. 
Calhoun, and his coadjutors, forward in their diabolical nul- 
lification raid upon our Union and Government — but the 



11 

iron will of President Jackson, and tlie irresistible eloquence 
of Webster, Clay, and their fellow-compatriots, baffled 
them. Their insidious, wicked plottings, however, have 
been continued for nearly a third of a century, till now, 
slavery with all of its arrogant and inhuman appendages, 
under a just and overruling Providence, has blindly de- 
stroyed itself, and prostrated its abettors in a most san- 
guinary rebellion against the best government in the world. 

Baltimore, July, 1865. 



Queries by William Crane, Written in 
Riclimond in 1832.* 



"1. In the advancing state of religion and civil liberty 
in the world, can the colored population of our country con- 
tinue in its present degraded condition ? 

''2. With a rapidly increasing population of two and a 
half millions [1862 over four millions] of colored people, 
four-fifths of whom are held in abject slavery, and all de- 
prived, through the pride, and prejudice, and oppression of 
Avhite men, of their inalienable rights, what ought the 
christian and the philanthropist to do, to ameliorate their 
condition ? 

^'3. If, during the last forty years, two hundred and 
sixty thousand colored people have been drained ojBf from 
lower Virginia, to the States farther south and west, and 
during the same period in this region, the increase of colored 
people has amounted to over one hundred and eighty-six 
per cent., while the white people have increased but fifty-one 
per cent., what must be expected for another forty years, 
when the States South and West, may be in a great measure, 
if not entirely, closed against the admission of slaves from 
this region? 

*First published in the Watchman and Reflector, Boston, September 25, 1862. 



12 

" 4. While the law of our country, as well as tlie moral 
feeling of the whole civilized world, has classed the crime 
of the slave-trader on the coast of Africa with that of the 
pirate and the murderer, can the people of this country 
calmly continue to witness their fellow beings advertised 
and sold at auction, often without any regard to family ties, 
and carried in droves from State to State by the domestic 
slave-trader, without feeling a just horror at the traffic, and 
without determining that this traffic shall be discontinued? 

'' 5. Notwithstanding the benevolent efforts of the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society have shown that these people are 
capable of prosperously governing themselves, when col- 
onized on the coast of Africa, and have moreover shown that 
these colonies are the only means of effectually annihilating 
the slave trade, of spreading the light of civilization and 
religion throughout Africa, as well as of immediately rais- 
ing the African character to an equality with the rest of 
mankind, is it not still vain to suppose that the whole of our 
colored population can ever be sent away ? 

"6. Is it possible, indeed, to find a habitable location and 
the means of trans})orting and subsisting for at least twelve 
months, even the present annual increase — say seventy thou- 
sand of them — at a cost of not less than fifty dollars each, 
leaving the two and a-half millions still among us? And 
could a society so numerous, so ignorant, and so hastily 
thrown together, possibly govern itself? 

''7. If the American Colonization Society, with all its 
laudable and vigorous efforts, has located and settled only 
three thousand colored people in the space of thirteen years, 
while during the same period the natural increase of these 
people in this country has amounted to about seven hun- 
dred thousand, and if many of the friends of the Coloniza- 
tion Society, are deserting it, and a powerful opposition is 
rising against it in tlie Northern States, while at the same 
time the free colored people are positively refusing to go — 
what possible ground of hope can there be tliat all will 



ever "be sent away? And does not this apparent impossi- 
bility furnish the abolitionist an unanswerable argument 
against the colonizationist who urges it? 

" 8. Does not experience prove that colored people almost 
universally turn away with disgust from the thought of their 
being all sent, en masse, from the land of their birth and 
the graves of their ancestors — to Africa, of which country 
they know nothing, except what white people tell them? 
And are they not generally disposed to regard colonization 
as an unfeeling, unjust, oppressive scheme towards them, 
and thus become ready listeners to abolitionism? 

"9. Can the free colored man be deprived of the property 
he may have inherited from his father, or derived from his 
own labor, and he be taken away ? Or by what process can 
the vast number of trusty, affectionate family servants ever 
be separated from the families in which they have been 
raised ? Would not all the worst horrors of a civil war be 
the immediate result of an attempt violently to separate 
them ? 

" 10. Intermingled through all our families, as the col- 
ored people are, connected with white people, in thousands 
of instances, not only by ties of friendship but of blood, and 
these ties not at all diminishing — will not insurmountable 
difficulties continually arise in attempting to remove them 
all? 

" 11. If the white and the colored people of this country 
were all of them originally emigrants to it, and if, since 
1808, no colored people have been admitted here, while the 
white people have come and gone again, at their pleasure, 
and are now, a large proportion of them, emigrants from the 
Northern States and from Europe, and if in fact the colored 
people are the workers of the soil on which they were born 
and on which their fathers have died, and have little or no 
knowledge of any other part of the world, can it be just to 
fiend them forcibly away, or to deny them the rights of na- 
tives, the rights, indeed, of native citizens ? 



14 

" 12. Is it not a fact that the working population of every 
country, with the vigorous constitutions derived from their 
working habits, increase much faster than those in affluent 
circumstances, and in time gradually, hut necessarily, be- 
come superior in numbers to them ? 

" 13. If the ancestors of our colored people were stolen 
from Africa, and, through the avarice and oppression of 
white men, have been for ages on our soil, will it not be 
doubling that oppression, and approving the deeds of our 
ancestors, to send them all back to Africa, when they are 
unwilling to go ? 

" 14. Is it just to say to the black man. This is not your 
country, you must return to Africa, when the Indian can so 
justly retort upon us, This is not your country — you ought 
in justice to return to Europe, and restore us the soil which 
you have taken from us ? 

''15. If a nation of colored people shall rise and spread 
itself on the Western coast of Africa, by emigration from 
this country, will the present wild, uncultivated soil there 
admit of a much faster growth in population than some of 
our Western States have witnessed ? And have not t)ur 
Northern and Middle States continued to increase, notwith- 
standing the immense drains of emigrants from them? 

"16. Is any great good to be derived from forcibly and 
oppressively removing all the colored people away, (admit- 
ting it were possible to do so,) other than to gratify the 
pride and haughtiness of the white man, in his supposed 
superiority over the colored — could they not in time be in- 
structed, and made intelligent and useful in this country, 
and would there not be room enough for all of us, if this 
pride and haughtiness were laid aside? 

"17. Does history furnish any example for the entire 
removal of such a population ? Did the exodus of the Is- 
raelites, or tlie expulsion of tlie Moors from Spain, furnish 
anything like a parallel? Was not one of these cases ef- 
fected by the miraculous power of the Almiglity, and the 



15 

other only in part, and by an unmerciful sword? And did 
not the most inveterate religious caste in both instances, pre- 
vent anything like such a union as our country furnishes? 
And in the immense range and changes among ancient and 
modern empires, are these the only examples that can be 
furnished? 

" 18. If the white man is disposed to make reparation for 
what the poor African has suffered at his hands, can he pos- 
sibly do it by forcibly driving him from the soil on which 
his fathers lived and died, and to which he has become as 
much naturalized as the white man himself? And will it 
n-ot be far more christian-like now to allow the colored man 
to remain where he is, if he prefers it, and to repair the 
wrongs which he and his fathers have suffered, by endeavor- 
ing to instruct, enlighten and christianize him? 

''19. If we endeavor to christianize the heathen in Africa, 
and feel it our duty to do so, will it not be an easier task to 
christianize their more enlightened descendants in this 
country ? And is it not grossly inconsistent to pray and 
labor that the native African may be enlightened and saved, 
while the colored people of our own country are in a great 
measure neglected ? 

"20. While the polished nations of Europe, with the 
most of the new States and republics of our own continent 
have given every political and social privilege to the black 
man, and while the English government has decided to 
allow full liberty to all slaves within her American colonial 
dominions — can the boasted freest people on earth continue 
to deny them to so large a part of their population? 

"21. Was there anciently, in Jerusalem or Kome, any 
prejudice against the color of the African skin? Were not 
the wife of Moses, the most cherished Egyptian wife of Solo- 
mon, the Queen of Sheba, and the Ethiopian eunuch in 
Palestine, iiu(}i the Carthagenian, Mauritanian andNumidian 
Princes in Rome, received as favorably as those from any 
other part of the world ? Or was the color of their skin 
any disparagement to them ? 



16 

'' 22. Did this prejudice ever exist previous to the six- 
teenth century ? Did it not take its rise among the depraved 
men-stealers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? 
And is it not now confined almost entirely to these United 
States ? 

"23. While the colors, black, and brown, and yellow are 
all comely enough when we ourselves choose them, in our 
apparel or any part of our equipage, and while the Creator 
has fastened these colors on a part of our race in such a 
manner that we can neither make nor remove them, and 
while " God is no respecter of persons, but has made of one 
blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the 
earth," is it not grossly wicked in us to indulge so much 
prejudice against the colored skin of our fellow beings as 
from that circumstance alone to deprive them of equal civil 
rights with ourselves ? 

"24. If the same political rights and privileges which 
the white man possesses were alloAved to the colored man, 
wou]d this necessarily give the colored man any claim to the 
daughter of the white man in marriage? Are not political 
rights, and social or family rights, distinct things ? Would 
they not continue separate, just as the respectable and the 
profligate, the poor and the rich, the learned and the illite- 
rate now do? And if marriage were legalized, would con- 
nections of this kind bear any proportion to the now existing 
wide-spread criminal cohabitation between white men and 
colored women throughout the Southern States? 

" 25. Are not colored women in all the Slave States uni- 
versally suspected to be of loose character, and all motive to 
retain their virtue thus destroyed ? Is not this the cause of 
an unknown amount of debauchery among wliite men, and 
does not the large natural increase of the colored over the 
white arise in a great measure from the mulatto product of 
this illicit intercourse? 

" 26. Does not an amalgamation of white and colored 
people, or a union of the two classes, already exist to so 



11 

great an extent that they can never be separated ? Can the- 
strong ties of friendship and of blood, mingled and inter- 
woven for ages through five or six millions of people, ever 
be sundered ? And are not these ties every day silently and 
secretly increasing, far beyond the utmost power of humaui 
prevention or control ? 

'•' 27. Can the white man be justified in denying inalien- 
able rights to the colored man, because possibly matrimonial 
connections between the white and the colored race may in 
future take place ? Havg we not now an immense number 
of mulattos among us, and the number constantly increas- 
ing ? And may it not be questioned whether the increase 
would be greater if marriage were legalized? 

'^28. Is it not denying the white man an inalienable 
right, legally to deprive him of the object of his choice, of 
whatever color that choice may be ? 

"29. Does not a parent now, in determining who shall 
receive the hand of hi^ daughter, affectionately and earnestly 
say to her, " Do not marry a drunkard or a debauchee, and 
insure yourself a life of misery ?" And if the law allowed 
her to marry a colored man, in the present state of society, 
would he not as earnestly and affectionately add„ '"Do not 
marry a black man, and thereby throw yourself out of the 
society with which you have always associated?" 

" 30. Will a just God sustain nine or ten millions [in 
1832] of the self-styled most free, most virtuous and most 
enlightened, out of the eight or ten hundred millions of our 
race, in the indulgence of an unwarrantable prejudice against 
the colored skin of our depressed neighbors ? (whom He 
commands us to love as ourselves.) And is there not awful 
reason to fear that, in accordance with his dealings with an- 
cient nations. He will rather repay on the heads of ivhite 
men the woes they have so ahundanily inflicted on the "^Indian 

*Witness the Seminole war in Florida, and especially the cruel expulsion of the 
Cherokees from upper Georgia; and witness now (July. 1805,) the desohition at 
Atlanta and so many other places. 



18 

tribes of our country on the one hand, and on tlie 2'>oor 
African slave on the other ? 

"31. If the barbarities of the feudal systems in Eng-land 
and other European countries — in the inevitable employment 
by the barons of slaves as well as free men, in their perpetual 
intestine wars — resulted ultimately in a perfect political 
equality of all the races, and caused the annihilation of 
slavery there, can no peaceable means be invented, in the 
unparalleled light of the nineteenth century, to annihilate 
slavery in our country, with all its concomitant evils? Or 
can our apprehensions be suppressed that possibly the same 
kind of intestine civil discord and barbarity may be left to 
accomplish it ? 

" 32. Can the millennial day arrive, and the Golden Eule 
of our Saviour, — "All things whatsoever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even so to them," — be fully and 
universally practised, while this prejudice against the color 
of our fellow-men continues? 

"33. As the millennium approaches, and the light of truth 
through the influence of Bibles, of Sunday Schools, of mis- 
sions and tracts, &c., &"c., becomes effectual on the hearts 
of men, Avill not the free, Bepuhlican, Christian wliite man 
feel, that in denying the intelligent colored man equal civil 
rights with himself, simjihj because his skin is not white, he 
is robbing the colored man of that which he considers far 
dearer than any earthly possessions? And will not the 
white man determine that he will not be a robber ? 

" 34. Can it be denied that many of the concomitants of 
slavery in our country are decidedly criminal ?— the non- 
recognition of the marriage rite ; the legally selling and 
scattering, at auction or otherwise, husbands and wives, pa- 
rents and children, just as the cupidity or lust of a heartless 
owner or buyer may lead them ; the internal traffic in human 
beings, dragging them in chains from State to State, placing 
them thus on a perfect level with brutes, with all of its inev- 
itable attendant concubinage ami debauchery; the legal 



19 

enactments, prohibiting all instruction of both slaves and 
free colored people, even to read the Bible, as veil as the 
corporeal, cruel punishment of colored men for trying to 
preach the Gospel ? Will not a just God ' visit for these 
things ?' Can He withhold His judgments from them ? 

"35. Can the slavery of the Old Testament be properly 
regarded in any other light than as one of the great evils of 
the fall of man, Avhich, with polygamy and many other 
evils in that dark age, God overlooked or 'winked at?' 
And should we not be guided on these subjects entirely by 
the superior light of the Golden Rule of the New Testament ? 

'' 36. Does the New Testament anywhere directly, une- 
quivocally approbate slavery, except as obedience to 
earthly governments required it? Do not its teachings, and 
its forms of christian communion, entirely nullify or take 
from this civil institution all of its evil concomitants ?" 

The foregoing queries were originally written out in 
Richmond, while I resided there, in 1832, with the exception 
of a very few slight additions and changes of phraseology. 
I had for nearly twenty years previously been on quite 
intimate terms with the most respectable, intelligent 
part of the religious colored people in Richmond, es- 
pecially in connection with their sending missionaries 
to Africa. I had earnestly participated in the great 
scheme of African colonization from its origin, and, 
along with the friends of that scheme generally, had enter- 
tained the Jiope, if not the belief, that our colored population 
might in time be all separated from the whites, and removed 
to Africa. But I became indubitably convinced that this 
must be utterly, hopelessly impracticable ; that the increas- 
ing millions of the African race were quite as immovably 
fixed to the soil of our Southern States, as the whites them- 
selves. I found very few individuals to sympathize with me 
in my conclusions. Some were quite willing to call me an 
abolitionist of the Northern stamp, and for this reason these 



20 

tliouglits were written out in a liypotlietical or interrogatory 
form J as the most unobjectionable mode of giving them. I 
find, however, after the lapse of thirty years, that, how- 
ever singular any of these views may be, lam only more and 
more confirmed in them. One of my strongest reasons for 
removinir my family from Eichmond to Baltimore in 1834, 
was an irrepressible foreboding of the terrible scenes we are 
now witnessing. I stated this to my brother, J. C. Crane, 
and that north of the Potomac I should hope to be out of 
the way of them. 

Wm. Crane. 

Baltimore, July, 1862. 



The following letter is a copy of one I addressed to a 
very influential friend ;* but from a personal interview with 
him, I became satisfied that his views and impressions 
were so little in coincidence with my own, that I never sent it 
to him : 

'' Richmond, %rch, 1833. 

" My Dear Sir : — I have written out some queries on the 
all-absorbing subject of our colored population, and should 
be glad if you can spare time to look them over and give me 
your opinion of them. I have thought and felt much on 
this subject from the time I removed from New Jersey to 
Richmond, twenty-one years ago, and my present vie.vs of 
it differ widely from almost every individual I meet with. 
Whether they are correct or not you may judge. They are 
the result of a good deal of acquaintance w'tli colored peo- 
ple, both slaves and free, and of much anxious thought over 
it. I have always felt a deep interest in the colonization of 
our colored people in Africa, and I still think that tliis ob.- 
ject of christian benevolence has vastly stronger claims on 

•» Dr. W. S. riuminer, then of the First Presbyterian Church, Richnaond, Va. 



21 

our exertions and our prcayers than any other of the great 
schemes of the day. We are thus sending the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ to heathen Africa ; we thus most effectually 
destroy the slave-trade at its root ; and we elevate every man 
we send there to an immediate equality with the rest of 
mankind ; while we most happily remove from our own 
country so much of the most deadly burden under which it 
groans. 

*'But the colored people ivill not go. They seem to me 
more iastened to the soil, in their prejudices, than the wliites 
themselves. The law of our State appropriating eighteen 
thousand dollars to send our free people to Africa, is a 
failure. I can't find one to accept this bounty. But sup- 
pose a mass of them were willing to go, and ample funds 
were supplied to send them, how could they subsist or govern 
themselves, in the unhealthy wilds of Liberia ? I expect a 
few enterprising, intelligent ones may continue to go, and 
perhaps as fast as our colonies there may be able to accom- 
modate them ; but the immense unobstructed annual increase 
in our country appals me. It would seem to me a miracle 
of vastly greater magnitude to separate the colored people 
from the white in this country, and remove them all to 
Africa, no matter how long a time should be allowed for it, 
(for time only increases the evil,) than that which removed 
the Israelites from Egypt. Indeed I must say, frankly, that 
I can see no possible ultimate remedy for this evil, but for 
the white man, in this boasted land of liberty, to lay aside 
his pride of color, and to admit what was never denied till 
within the last few centuries, that ' God has made of one 
blood all nations of men,' that ' all men are born free and 
equal,' and Avithout any regard to complexion, all naturaliv 
possess the same inalienable rights ; and I cannot escape the 
conclusion that, however determined the white man may be 
never to submit to such a state of things in this country, a 
just God has left Inm no other remedy for this great evil. 
Having brouglit the colored man forcibly here to gratify his 



22 



cupidity and avarice, I can't see how he can now rid himself 
of the incumbrance. Inevitable destiny seems to me to have 
settled this question ; and, viewing the matter thus, I feel 
deeply chagrined at the late stringent laws of our Legisla- 
ture against any sort of schools for c )lored people, and a 
prohibition against all colored preaching, or even an assem- 
blage, at any time or place, by themselves, of more than five 
persons, for Avhatever purpose, evincing thus a determina- 
tion to prevent even their learning to read the Bible. 

I confess my heart sickens at this, and I can't help inquir- 
ing. Has the colored man no advocate in this land of liberty ? 
— no heroic philanthropist who has the ability and the cour- 
age to plead his cause? Will a continued (not to say fruit- 
less) effort to keep him in ignorance, (while light is spread- 
ing all around him,) or the passage of stringent or cruel 
laws, remedy this growing evil? Or must it still continue, 
while thousands of white people, brooding anxiously and 
silently over it, find themselves unable to suppress their 
forebodings that possibly nullification, or some similar ground 
of fanatical discord, may array North and South, anti-slavery 
and pro-slavery, in a deadly strife, such as may break up the 
bonds of our Union in scenes of blood, and ultimately thus 
break off the shackles of the slave? May God, in infinite 
mercy, prevent this, and may He give us all grace and wis- 
dom to understand our duty with regard to this momentous 
subject, as well as strength and prudence in doing it. 

I should be glad to learn whether your impressions coin- 
cide at all with mine. 



Yours, &c. 



W. C. 



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